Analysis of Reporting Verbs in Master's Theses

Abstract

Reporting verbs are one of the crucial components in academic writing. Most of the researches have focused on analyzing the reporting verbs in doctoral theses, students’ assignments, research articles, and journals; however few have focused on Master's theses. Thus, the purpose of this research is to investigate (1) which reporting verbs are mostly used by Masters students in their theses, (2) the frequency of the reporting verbs used, and (3) the impact(s) of the reporting verbs employed in the theses. Hyland's (2000) framework is used as a guideline in this document analysis. Six theses completed in 2012 were selected randomly, and they were written by local, Malaysian students who did their Masters in the ELS programme of UKM. A checklist was used as the instrument to identify the groups and the functions of the reporting verbs. The findings showed that Masters students were more familiar with the reporting verbs from the research acts category, as compared to cognition acts and discourse acts. The findings also revealed that the verbs found from the research acts category are the most widely used, while states from the discourse acts category are the most frequently repeated reporting verbs found in Masters theses. The suggestion to consider is to equip the Masters students with the knowledge of using reporting verbs in a Research Methodology course, instead of the structure and the content of the research itself. Our findings are then used to indicate the areas that we need to focus on in academic writing courses.